Mildly amusing but I really think it helps to be British as well as old enough to remember and appreciate them.

Double dose of Glennis - but not much else

Islington Studios, Islington, London, England, UK

Alastair Sim in Alf's Button Afloat (1938)

Bruce Winston in Alf's Button Afloat (1938)

Bud Flanagan

Chesney Allen

Jimmy Nervo

W.A. Darlington

Ralph Smart

Marriott Edgar

Alf discovers that one of the buttons on his uniform is made from the metal of Aladdin&apos;s lamp. When he cleans it a genie appears.

Marcel Varnel

Alf&apos;s Button Afloat

Throughout the 40&apos;s and a bit either side, every movie by Gainsborough Pictures would open on an oval frame showing the lovely Glennis Lorimer greeting us in Regency costume, to brand the studio with an air of elegance, however pertinent or otherwise to the upcoming film. In the present case, the upcoming film gives us Glennis as leading lady too, which alone makes it worth watching. Not much else does.

Loosely adapted into knockabout farce from a novel by F. Anstey, it features the popular music-hall act, the Crazy Gang, as a group of street-singers who manage to get sandwiched between two squads of Royal Marines marching back to barracks, and unwittingly press-ganged into their ranks. The story swings on one of them polishing-up a brass button that has been recycled from Aladdin&apos;s lamp, calling up the long-dormant genie, offering his services in the usual slavish manner.

Up to about the midpoint, this works reasonably well, but in the second half, it provides too much licence to depart from a coherent plot, and we find ourselves disoriented in the long hunting-party scene at a country mansion, simply too far removed from the shipboard frolics we were getting into.

The Crazy Gang are given an opportunity for a joke opera performance that is enjoyable enough, with an enthusiastic Bud Flanagan in drag, but the young Alistair Sim is not well-suited to his role as the genie, and the various wishes that he grants to the gang-members just invite one film cliché after another. As with too many other film and stage comedies of 1938, the humour has not dated well at all, however much critical favour it may have gained at the time. I hadn&apos;t realised that the Colonel Bogie march was famous as early as this, since it became so identified with World War II, especially Burma - with or without its unofficial lyrics.

Throughout the 40's and a bit either side, every movie by Gainsborough Pictures would open on an oval frame showing the lovely Glennis Lorimer greeting us in Regency costume, to brand the studio with an air of elegance, however pertinent or otherwise to the upcoming film. In the present case, the upcoming film gives us Glennis as leading lady too, which alone makes it worth watching. Not much else does.

Loosely adapted into knockabout farce from a novel by F. Anstey, it features the popular music-hall act, the Crazy Gang, as a group of street-singers who manage to get sandwiched between two squads of Royal Marines marching back to barracks, and unwittingly press-ganged into their ranks. The story swings on one of them polishing-up a brass button that has been recycled from Aladdin's lamp, calling up the long-dormant genie, offering his services in the usual slavish manner.

Up to about the midpoint, this works reasonably well, but in the second half, it provides too much licence to depart from a coherent plot, and we find ourselves disoriented in the long hunting-party scene at a country mansion, simply too far removed from the shipboard frolics we were getting into.

The Crazy Gang are given an opportunity for a joke opera performance that is enjoyable enough, with an enthusiastic Bud Flanagan in drag, but the young Alistair Sim is not well-suited to his role as the genie, and the various wishes that he grants to the gang-members just invite one film cliché after another. As with too many other film and stage comedies of 1938, the humour has not dated well at all, however much critical favour it may have gained at the time. I hadn't realised that the Colonel Bogie march was famous as early as this, since it became so identified with World War II, especially Burma - with or without its unofficial lyrics.

Alf discovers that one of the buttons on his uniform is made from the metal of Aladdin's lamp. When he cleans it a genie appears.

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Alf's Button Afloat

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